The Wedding Feast at Canaa

The work is one of a pair of paintings.
See also Inv. A 209

Luca Giordano was an eclectic artist who trained in Naples observing the painting of Ribera and of Mattia Preti, then in the Rome of Pietro da Cortona, Rubens and Poussin. In producing these works he offers proof of his ability to conceive and represent great stories, narrated in those vast compositions that were to bring him success also in Spain and in his home town of Naples. Around the middle of the seventeenth century he arrived in Venice, where he was immediately attracted by the colours of Veneto figurative tradition, in particular by the painting of Titian and Veronese, and where he launched the season of the “tenebrosi”.

The two paintings in the Museum in Vicenza, perhaps conceived as a pair and originally belonging to the collection of the lawyer Carlo Cordellina, sum up all these different suggestions.

In The Wedding Feast at Canaa the episode from the gospel is narrated proceeding in a counter-clockwise direction: a pair of servants, in the right-hand corner of the canvas, are hastily pouring into jars the water that Christ, implored by the Madonna, will change into wine; the bride and groom, in the centre, are anxiously waiting for the coloured page boy to bring them the jug filled with the new drink while, almost relegated to the left of the composition, Mother and Son are speaking together. Astonished and amazed, the other guests talk to one another as they witness the miraculous event.

The painting showing Bathsheba who is about to take a bath, assisted by her handmaidens, appears less dynamic and more composed. The light highlights the forms of the nude body of the woman: King David, observing her beauty from afar, will fall in love with her and take her as his wife. The artist’s brush defines some naturalistic details with extreme precision: the parrot, the little dog and the flowers in the garden.